California authorities have determined that one of last month’s California wildfires – one which destroyed 21 homes and injured several people in the Los Angeles area – was accidentally started by a 10-year-old boy playing with matches. Now they have to decide what to do about it, the options including removing him from his parents’ custody, placing him in juvenile detention, and handing his parents a multi-million dollar tab.

The rule of thumb when dealing with juveniles is whether the child understood that his actions were wrong – but it’s not so simple in this case: It’s one thing to understand that playing with matches is wrong, and quite another to anticipate that you might be laying waste to your entire neighborhood.

August 7, 2007

Last month, dozens of people came to visit Stephen Grant’s Michigan home, on display in advance of a foreclosure sale (the bank had taken over the home because Stephen hadn’t made any payments since February, when he allegedly dismembered his wife Tara, hid her torso in the garage and other parts of her body nearby, then reported her missing) — but when it came time to place a bid on the house, nobody was interested.

The home was listed at just over $220,000, more than $45,000 below its appraised value. A local real estate agent says he doubts a house with this history could sell for more than $150,000.

So I’m going to throw out a question here: What sort of discount would it take for you to buy a home that was the site of a recent, gory, highly-publicized murder?